So, yet again, I’m going to have to put any announcements on hold, and instead, we’ll be focussing on the fact that it is now autumn by going a little GHOSTLY …
Yes, despite all appearances, September is with us, and the waning of the year has officially commenced. Okay, there are only the merest hints of red out there in the woodland brocade thus far, the sun is high and the air temperatures warm. But the fruit is hanging full and lush, the nights are drawing in and the mornings are starting out misty.
In anticipation of the real darkness shortly to come, not to mention the fog and the cold and the twisting, leafless branches, this seems like the ideal opportunity to launch an occasional new feature, which I’ve been toying with for quite some time.
Welcome to …
TRIO OF TERROR
It struck me recently, while combing my way through the world of dark and eerie fiction, that, while it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding to be reviewing novels and collections or anthologies of short stories, one form of fiction I’m not offering my thoughts on is the short novel or novella.
So, hell, I thought, I ought to start reviewing novellas (and short novels) as well. I owe it to the authors and to anyone else who, by some remote chance, might be following my tips on here.
Thus, without further ado, here’s the new feature, and here’s the way it’ll work. Unlike an anthology or a full-blown novel, the average novella – most clock in at around 20K to 50K words – is too slim an object to my mind to merit a full Thrillers, Chillers entry all of its own. So, what I thought I’d do is review each one as they came along, but then store said write-ups in the back room until I had three I loved that sat together neatly, and then put the whole trio on the blog.
I stress that I won’t be doing a compare-and-contrast between the three; they’ll all be individual entities, written by different authors and may even have been written years and years apart. But it’ll be an interesting exercise to review three each time that perhaps complement each other either by tone, undercurrent or subtext. This week, for example, I’ll be reviewing Dolly by Susan Hill, The Devil’s Own Work by Alan Judd, and Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge … yes, you’ve guessed it, the common theme here today is ‘the darkness within ourselves’.
This will also assist at the end of each review, when I discuss a potential (i.e. imaginary) three-episode TV series, because you can’t have three episodes of something like that, which are wildly different from each other; theme must be maintained.
As usual, I’ll endeavour to keep the SPOILERS to a minimum; there will certainly be no given-away denouements or exposed twists-in-the-tail, but by the definition of the word ‘review’, I’m going to be talking about these novellas in more than just thumbnail detail, extolling the aspects that I particularly enjoyed (in each case, I’ll outline the plot first and follow it with my opinions) … so I guess if you’d rather not know anything at all about these pieces of work in advance of reading them yourself, then these particular posts will not be your thing.
Outline
We’re in England in the post-war era, and we open as two children, each in their own way lost, are relocated together at remote Iyott House. They are cousins but they barely know each other, and they couldn’t be more different in temperament.
Edward Cayley is an orphan who has been raised by his business-like stepbrother, not exactly cruelly but with no expectation of warmth or generosity, so he remains a quiet, observant boy who shows little in the way of emotion. Leonora van Horst, on the other hand, is the daughter of a flighty single mother, who travels the world in pursuit of wealthy men, and has never yet found happiness. Leonora is subsequently a spoiled, haughty child, who, while not unintelligent, has willfully turned a blind eye to her parent’s uselessness.
Edward and Leonora are not natural friends, and their new residence is hardly likely to make them so. It’s a dreary, damp abode far out in the Cambridgeshire fens, though their new guardian, their elderly Aunt Kestrel Dickinson, while unused to children, is inclined towards kindness and attempts to make them welcome, even if she has no option but to install their bedrooms in the attic.
As a wet, misty spring gives way to a hot summer, the eeriness of the children’s new home recedes, and their relationship develops. Edward still finds it difficult to get on with the ever-superior Leonora, but gradually her façade crumbles and she reveals much about her early life, pointing out the deficiencies of her mother, who is too self-centred to ever understand her daughter’s needs and desires, and failed always to buy her the one thing she really wanted: a beautiful doll dressed as an exotic princess.
When Edward confides this in Aunt Kestrel, she makes a wearying expedition to London to try and find such an item for Leonora’s birthday, finally returning with a delicate China doll, which though expensive and gorgeous is not the one Leonora wanted. In the most horrific display of ingratitude, the girl has a spectacular tantrum and hurls the doll at the wall, breaking it, before storming off, thereby setting in motion a series of supernatural events that will not just follow the two children into adulthood but will blight both their lives to the point of ruin …
Review
The first thing to say about Dolly is that we are firmly in Susan Hill territory. You won’t need to be a student of the genre to be aware that her most famous work to date is The Woman in Black, which is set at bleak Eel Marsh House on the northeast coast. Well, here we are further south in East Anglia, but it’s a flat, equally dreary landscape, and while the house has a different name, Yyott, the nearby village is called Eeyle.
So, straight from the beginning with Dolly, you know what you’re going to get.
Realistic, non-melodramatic characters compete for our attention against a grim backdrop of Gothic landscapes and supernatural spite that quite literally knows no end and which, at times, is genuinely so chilling that you may well be looking over your shoulder while you read.
Yes, there’s something about Susan Hill’s work that touches a very raw nerve.
So many ghost stories fall flat in the modern age, when society is seemingly beset by such a profusion of worrying issues that we find it difficult to fear the dead. But not in The Woman in Black, as many will attest, and definitely not in Dolly.
In addition, the manner of the evil that confronts us here is very unexpected. We’re not talking revenants, or rotted corpses rising, or shadow-figures rattling chains. But, without giving anything away, what happens in Dolly would still be mind-bendingly terrifying were it to happen to someone in real life.
So, don’t be fooled into thinking this is some quaint tale from the ‘ancestor that returned’ stable. It really, really isn’t. The horror here is real and visceral, and literally goes bone-deep.
On top of that, it’s all wonderfully written. Yet again, Susan Hill calls on her inner poet, perfectly and succinctly capturing the flat wilderness that is the East Anglian mudflats, the silent, winding waterways, the empty skies, the occasional rotting hulk of an abandoned farmhouse.
Read it, even if you’re not a ghost story aficionado. This is a mystery chiller of the first order, which will keep you awake and thinking about it long after you’ve turned the final page. But it’s also a wonderful piece of writing that grips, moves and entertains, and yet doesn’t waste a single word during its very manageable 160 pages.
by Alan Judd (1991)
Outline
Two university friends embark on very different careers when they finish their education. One of them, an unnamed chap who becomes a schoolteacher, is deeply interested in literary fiction but has no talent himself and faces a future on the fringes of the intelligentsia, though, as a contented suburbanite, he isn’t daunted by this, especially when his French sweetheart, Chantal, accepts his proposal and the two of them settle down to what looks like a quiet middle-class life.
In contrast, the other one, Edward (surname never given), is a talented but inexperienced novelist, whose charm and good looks have opened doors for him before he’s even published his first book, and whose family’s wealth has allowed him to work as a literary reviewer while attempting to make his name as an author. Ironically though, it is one of Edward’s reviews that finally draws the world’s attention to him.
When he brutally criticises the latest novel by much-lauded writer, O.M. Tyrell, accusing the widely respected ‘doyen of English letters’ of favouring excessive style over anything approaching substance, the literati are stunned. Tyrell, though an octogenarian now and famously reclusive, is regarded as a genius whose work has for decades been beyond reproach. However Tyrell responds, which in itself is remarkable, by inviting Edward to interview him at his retreat on Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera.
At the same time, the teacher and Chantal will also be in southern France, visiting in-laws, and so a plan is made that all three will meet up after the interview and enjoy a brief holiday together. The teacher and Chantal arrive a day early, and see Tyrell in a harbourside café with his mistress Eudoxie, an exotic, ageless beauty who appears to wait on her very elderly beau hand and foot. That night, Edward attends Tyrell’s house as intended, but towards the end of the two writers’ friendly enough discussion, the older man dies from what seems to be a sudden heart attack. Before he expires, he hands Edward a bulky, handwritten manuscript, which at first glance is almost illegible, saying that this is for him … that it was ‘meant for him’.
Back in England, the teacher gets a brief look at the mysterious manuscript but considers it gibberish and dismisses it as an antique curiosity. However, from this point on, Edward’s career as a novelist soars. He pours out one prize-winning tome after another, earning a fortune in the process, though the teacher increasingly dislikes his best friend’s new books, thinking them well-written but uncharacteristically shallow. He is most startled, however, when, as old acquaintances, they hook up again years later and he learns that Edward, a distracted and oddly indolent fellow these days, has not only adopted Tyrell’s mantle as England’s most revered author, but is living with Tyrell’s former partner, Eudoxie, who, while the rest of the group are progressing into middle age, looks no older than she did before …
Review
Alan Judd is a very respected novelist in his own right, but The Devil’s Own Work attracted particular interest when it was published because it was the first time (and, to date, the only time) in which his subject was the supernatural. Perhaps inevitably, given Judd’s literary reputation, but also because of his biography of Ford Maddox Ford (which was published one year earlier) and a brief essay at the end of The Devil’s Own Work, in which he reveals that Tyrell was based on Graham Greene, readers and reviewers have looked for much deeper meanings in the work.
It’s certainly the case that in The Devil’s Own Work, Judd is revisiting Faust (for the uninitiated, a 16th century German astrologer who reputedly sold his soul to Satan in exchange for a long and successful life, a concept that has been rebooted many times in fiction), but Judd also uses this short but eerie novella to take potshots at a number of contemporary targets.
It’s a clear excoriation of literary critics, not just those who can’t write themselves, but those who follow fashion, jump on bandwagons and subsequently lose all objectivity. It’s also an expression of frustration at the handful of writers who achieve incredible fame when their work hasn’t merited it but were simply in the right place at the right time. It’s that bandwagon thing again, I suppose, the random mob mentality that condemns some to obscurity and others to fortune and glory. All of this is embodied in the affable but bland personality of the narrator in The Devil’s Own Work. He’s an unremarkable everyman who blends into the background when superstars take the stage. He’s resigned to a future of anonymity, but deep inside he becomes terser the higher his friend’s star rises, especially as he considers the adulation to be fake because the work is ultimately poor.
And this perhaps was Judd’s real purpose in writing The Devil’s Own Work: as a shot across the bows of literary elitists everywhere who are resting on their laurels, or simply undeserving of the praise, or who have set aside their own voice for the sake of commercial success.
Which is all well and good, but is this short work also effective as a horror story, because that is how it is packaged? And the answer, for me at least, is yes.
The Devil’s Own Work is written in linear fashion, the narrator taking us through the events of all the main characters’ lives (those he is aware of!) in a more or less straight line from the early days of hope and ambition right through to the final disaster, without making many deviations en route. He takes time out here and there to offer nuanced thoughts and views and his understanding of how the literary world works in particular, but it’s all so smoothly and precisely written that you can’t help but enjoy every minute. And yet, while all this is going on, the evil in the midst of the tale subtly but inexorably tightens its grip.
Not just on Edward, but on all three of our main protagonists.
It won’t surprise anyone and it won’t spoil anything to mention that the splendidly-named Eudoxie is part of the demonic entity invoked here, while the mysterious manuscript (think something incomprehensible along the lines of the Voynich Manuscript) is the infernal source of Edward’s new ‘talent’. Early on, for the most part, it’s merely creepy, but the real jeopardy gradually emerges from the cursed writer’s ever more frantic efforts to free himself, and the terror that grows on him while his teacher friend observes coolly from what he assumes is a safe distance (‘envy’ as much a deadly sin as ‘greed’), the whole thing finally culminating in a finale which, while it isn’t exactly explosive, I personally found bone-chilling.
Alan Judd’s The Devil’s Own Work is the epitome of a literary horror story and hugely effective on many levels. And if you’re only here to be scared, don’t worry. That is one of them.
DARK HARVEST
Outline
Two university friends embark on very different careers when they finish their education. One of them, an unnamed chap who becomes a schoolteacher, is deeply interested in literary fiction but has no talent himself and faces a future on the fringes of the intelligentsia, though, as a contented suburbanite, he isn’t daunted by this, especially when his French sweetheart, Chantal, accepts his proposal and the two of them settle down to what looks like a quiet middle-class life.
In contrast, the other one, Edward (surname never given), is a talented but inexperienced novelist, whose charm and good looks have opened doors for him before he’s even published his first book, and whose family’s wealth has allowed him to work as a literary reviewer while attempting to make his name as an author. Ironically though, it is one of Edward’s reviews that finally draws the world’s attention to him.
When he brutally criticises the latest novel by much-lauded writer, O.M. Tyrell, accusing the widely respected ‘doyen of English letters’ of favouring excessive style over anything approaching substance, the literati are stunned. Tyrell, though an octogenarian now and famously reclusive, is regarded as a genius whose work has for decades been beyond reproach. However Tyrell responds, which in itself is remarkable, by inviting Edward to interview him at his retreat on Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera.
At the same time, the teacher and Chantal will also be in southern France, visiting in-laws, and so a plan is made that all three will meet up after the interview and enjoy a brief holiday together. The teacher and Chantal arrive a day early, and see Tyrell in a harbourside café with his mistress Eudoxie, an exotic, ageless beauty who appears to wait on her very elderly beau hand and foot. That night, Edward attends Tyrell’s house as intended, but towards the end of the two writers’ friendly enough discussion, the older man dies from what seems to be a sudden heart attack. Before he expires, he hands Edward a bulky, handwritten manuscript, which at first glance is almost illegible, saying that this is for him … that it was ‘meant for him’.
Back in England, the teacher gets a brief look at the mysterious manuscript but considers it gibberish and dismisses it as an antique curiosity. However, from this point on, Edward’s career as a novelist soars. He pours out one prize-winning tome after another, earning a fortune in the process, though the teacher increasingly dislikes his best friend’s new books, thinking them well-written but uncharacteristically shallow. He is most startled, however, when, as old acquaintances, they hook up again years later and he learns that Edward, a distracted and oddly indolent fellow these days, has not only adopted Tyrell’s mantle as England’s most revered author, but is living with Tyrell’s former partner, Eudoxie, who, while the rest of the group are progressing into middle age, looks no older than she did before …
Review
Alan Judd is a very respected novelist in his own right, but The Devil’s Own Work attracted particular interest when it was published because it was the first time (and, to date, the only time) in which his subject was the supernatural. Perhaps inevitably, given Judd’s literary reputation, but also because of his biography of Ford Maddox Ford (which was published one year earlier) and a brief essay at the end of The Devil’s Own Work, in which he reveals that Tyrell was based on Graham Greene, readers and reviewers have looked for much deeper meanings in the work.
It’s certainly the case that in The Devil’s Own Work, Judd is revisiting Faust (for the uninitiated, a 16th century German astrologer who reputedly sold his soul to Satan in exchange for a long and successful life, a concept that has been rebooted many times in fiction), but Judd also uses this short but eerie novella to take potshots at a number of contemporary targets.
It’s a clear excoriation of literary critics, not just those who can’t write themselves, but those who follow fashion, jump on bandwagons and subsequently lose all objectivity. It’s also an expression of frustration at the handful of writers who achieve incredible fame when their work hasn’t merited it but were simply in the right place at the right time. It’s that bandwagon thing again, I suppose, the random mob mentality that condemns some to obscurity and others to fortune and glory. All of this is embodied in the affable but bland personality of the narrator in The Devil’s Own Work. He’s an unremarkable everyman who blends into the background when superstars take the stage. He’s resigned to a future of anonymity, but deep inside he becomes terser the higher his friend’s star rises, especially as he considers the adulation to be fake because the work is ultimately poor.
And this perhaps was Judd’s real purpose in writing The Devil’s Own Work: as a shot across the bows of literary elitists everywhere who are resting on their laurels, or simply undeserving of the praise, or who have set aside their own voice for the sake of commercial success.
Which is all well and good, but is this short work also effective as a horror story, because that is how it is packaged? And the answer, for me at least, is yes.
The Devil’s Own Work is written in linear fashion, the narrator taking us through the events of all the main characters’ lives (those he is aware of!) in a more or less straight line from the early days of hope and ambition right through to the final disaster, without making many deviations en route. He takes time out here and there to offer nuanced thoughts and views and his understanding of how the literary world works in particular, but it’s all so smoothly and precisely written that you can’t help but enjoy every minute. And yet, while all this is going on, the evil in the midst of the tale subtly but inexorably tightens its grip.
Not just on Edward, but on all three of our main protagonists.
It won’t surprise anyone and it won’t spoil anything to mention that the splendidly-named Eudoxie is part of the demonic entity invoked here, while the mysterious manuscript (think something incomprehensible along the lines of the Voynich Manuscript) is the infernal source of Edward’s new ‘talent’. Early on, for the most part, it’s merely creepy, but the real jeopardy gradually emerges from the cursed writer’s ever more frantic efforts to free himself, and the terror that grows on him while his teacher friend observes coolly from what he assumes is a safe distance (‘envy’ as much a deadly sin as ‘greed’), the whole thing finally culminating in a finale which, while it isn’t exactly explosive, I personally found bone-chilling.
Alan Judd’s The Devil’s Own Work is the epitome of a literary horror story and hugely effective on many levels. And if you’re only here to be scared, don’t worry. That is one of them.
by Norman Partridge (2006)
Outline
It’s 1963, and we’re in a nameless Midwest town, which is famous for one thing only: rearing high-grade corn. The quality of the produce is no surprise for two main reasons. One, the cornfields stretch to virtually every horizon. Two, the town lives under an ancient spell, which, depending on the events of each Halloween Night, may leave it in financial ruin, or grant it the huge boon of agricultural success.
However, the latter is not easily obtained. For reasons a tad obscure (again, we’re looking at some kind of supernatural pact or curse), each October 31st, a nightmarish figure arises from the pumpkin patch at the end of the black road. It’s known by a variety of names – Hacksaw Face or Sawtooth Jack, or more commonly, the Halloween Boy. It takes the form of a suit of raggedy old clothes, now filled with vegetable matter (and candy!), with an oversized pumpkin for a head, on which a truly evil face has been carved.
Every year it’s the same story, the monstrosity slowly taking shape on a cruciform structure left out there just for this purpose, and finally, on Halloween Night, released, armed with a butcher’s knife and sent on foot into the town, where it will annihilate anyone it encounters, though ultimately, it has a more specific intention: to get to the old brick church at the heart of the curse before the automated bell system sounds the midnight hour. If it succeeds in this, the town is doomed – at least for another year, though the consensus is that it wouldn’t survive even a few months under such hardship.
To give the townsfolk a fighting chance, they are permitted to try and stop the monster, but this task may only be accomplished by a male aged between 16 and 18. Thus, every Halloween Night, in an event called simply ‘the Run’, while everybody else hides, the young guys in the town are out en masse, armed with baseball bats, pipes, axes, knives and pitchforks. Their purpose is to destroy the Halloween Boy before he gets anywhere near achieving his goal.
Inevitably, there’s an air of total lawlessness. The all-male teenage gangs have been starved for the previous five days, the idea that they’ll go after the creature all the more hungrily because of the chocolates and other goodies where his heart should be, but also, I suspect, so that none of them will be completely on their game. For both these reasons, there is much looting and Purge-type violence between the rival groups. In response, the town’s sole cop, Jerry Ricks, a hick of the first order, patrols with a vengeance, and thinks nothing of shooting first and asking questions later.
No matter how many people die on October 31st in this place, questions never seem to be asked. But Ricks isn’t just the way he is because he likes hurting people (even though he does). He’s also the paid-up attack-dog for the Harvesters’ Association, the shady controlling-power in this neck of the woods, who stand to gain the most whenever the Halloween Boy is beaten, and therefore are probably at the root (no pun intended) of this mysterious situation.
This makes the all-licensed Ricks a very dangerous individual indeed. Almost as bad as the monster at the heart of the tale. Maybe worse.
Meanwhile, all these dangers aside, the prize for the guy who finally takes the target down is felt to be worth the risk. His family is showered with financial benefits, a new house, a new car and the like. But he – the kid who did it – gets to leave. Because that is the other thing. No one else ever escapes this one-horse town. They literally can’t. It’s an out-of-time capsule, a mini-universe wherein the Halloween horror story repeats itself year after year, until it’s now become a self-fulfilling prophecy of blood.
This year though, it might be different, because a loner, Pete McCormick, the son of the town drunk, and a kid in awe of Jim Shepherd, who won the prize the previous year and has since vanished, is determined to find out what lies at the heart of this darkness. He is assisted in this by one Kelly Haines, a girl, so she shouldn’t even be on the streets, but someone else who’s been abused by the town’s authorities and is now determined to get answers (and payback).
It is no small thing for these two isolated youngsters, who have never seen beyond the endless flatlands of corn, to confront and defeat the monstrous Halloween Boy, and at the same time evade the ever-watchful eyes of Jerry Ricks and the Harvesters’ Association …
Review
I first approached Dark Harvest thinking we were in the realms of an archetypal stalk-and-slash romp. It had all the makings. An undead maniac with scarecrow attributes and edged steel in his fist. A Palookaville town cut off by geography and culture from the rest of the modern world. Teens in jock jackets riding hot rods while armed with bats. A redneck cop who lets his nightstick do all the talking. And of course, lashings and lashings of Halloween.
It was all there. All I had to do was sit back and enjoy the procession of ever-more brutal murders. But that’s not how it played out.
Quite rightly, Dark Harvest won the Bram Stoker Award in 2006 and was named one of the Best 100 Books of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly. You don’t need to be a horror aficionado to know that wouldn’t happen with everyday slasher fare.
First of all, the style of the writing is Norman Partridge at his concise but visual best. It’s got energy, it’s got drive, rattling us at speed through one nerve-tingling situation after another, but always hitting us with rich if macabre poetry. So yes, there are incredibly gory deaths and some smash-bang action sequences, but the unique atmosphere of Halloween – ‘the smell of cinnamon, gunpowder and melted wax’ – emanates from the pages.
At the same time, there’s a genuinely warm heart under all this carnage.
The monster is not an unthinking killing-machine, the evil is nothing to do with the scariest night of the year, or a witch’s curse, or any kind of devil or demon. I don’t want to say too much more here, because I don’t want to give away any serious spoilers, but suffice to say that, as our two heroes dig deeper and deeper into the complex mystery (because this is not just another night when half-crazed individuals run a gauntlet of ultra-violence), they uncover very human reasons for the perversion of this once homely community.
It might seem ridiculous at first glance, this annual nightmare that visits a town in the middle of nowhere, but ultimately you’ll recognise a familiar story here: a few bad apples souring things for everyone else; human self-interest running without restraint, leading in the end to complete societal breakdown. There is definitely a meaning to all this madness.
The other thing that really caught my eye about Dark Harvest is that we’re not in a world of stereotypes. Again, from the cover blurb, you might be tempted to think it’s good guys, bad guys and a monster. But no, it isn’t that simple. Even the monster has a multi-levelled personality and evokes much pathos, while the heroes, Pete McCormick and Kelly Haines, could easily fall into the ‘Loser Club’ bracket where so many ‘small town horror’ outcasts have dwelled in the past. But they don’t. They’re just ordinary teenagers, with the same strengths and weaknesses that we all share. Even the villains have a purpose in Dark Harvest; they’re not just evil for the sake of it. I particularly liked Mitch Crenshaw in this regard, the coolest kid in town and the candidate most likely to take the Halloween Boy down this year, as he’s on it's trail in his souped-up Chrysler. A slick badass, tunnel-visioned, violent tempered and seemingly dismissive of his doofus buddies, and yet, when they’re in real danger, he shows concern for them.
Again, I’ve probably said too much about Dark Harvest. The idea of this is to sell it, not tell it. So go and check it out. It’s justifiably earned its reputation as one of the best Halloween-flavoured horror novellas on the market. It’s a wild ride for sure, but there are very deep tracts here that will satisfy you far, far more than the average ‘pitchfork and hatchet’ job.
And now …
Trio of Terror 1 – the TV show
Though of course, that title won’t do. So, with regard to this occasional feature, I’m even going to be impudent enough to give it a title. How about, on this occasion, The Monsters Inside.
Check out these possible casts (all for fun, of course – which is why I have an unlimited budget)
Dolly
Edward – Alex Pettyfer
Leonora – Emilia Clarke
Aunt Kestrel – Judi Dench
The Devil’s Own Work
Edward – Aaron Taylor-Johnson
The Teacher – Will Poulter
Eudoxie – Cara Gee
Tyrrel – Anthony Hopkins
Dark Harvest
(Out of my hands, this one, as a movie’s just been made and is very shortly for release. So, this is an actual cast):
Richie Shepherd (standing in for Pete McCormick) – Casey Likes
Kelly Hines - E’myri Crutchfield
Jerry Ricks – Luke Kirby
Outline
It’s 1963, and we’re in a nameless Midwest town, which is famous for one thing only: rearing high-grade corn. The quality of the produce is no surprise for two main reasons. One, the cornfields stretch to virtually every horizon. Two, the town lives under an ancient spell, which, depending on the events of each Halloween Night, may leave it in financial ruin, or grant it the huge boon of agricultural success.
However, the latter is not easily obtained. For reasons a tad obscure (again, we’re looking at some kind of supernatural pact or curse), each October 31st, a nightmarish figure arises from the pumpkin patch at the end of the black road. It’s known by a variety of names – Hacksaw Face or Sawtooth Jack, or more commonly, the Halloween Boy. It takes the form of a suit of raggedy old clothes, now filled with vegetable matter (and candy!), with an oversized pumpkin for a head, on which a truly evil face has been carved.
Every year it’s the same story, the monstrosity slowly taking shape on a cruciform structure left out there just for this purpose, and finally, on Halloween Night, released, armed with a butcher’s knife and sent on foot into the town, where it will annihilate anyone it encounters, though ultimately, it has a more specific intention: to get to the old brick church at the heart of the curse before the automated bell system sounds the midnight hour. If it succeeds in this, the town is doomed – at least for another year, though the consensus is that it wouldn’t survive even a few months under such hardship.
To give the townsfolk a fighting chance, they are permitted to try and stop the monster, but this task may only be accomplished by a male aged between 16 and 18. Thus, every Halloween Night, in an event called simply ‘the Run’, while everybody else hides, the young guys in the town are out en masse, armed with baseball bats, pipes, axes, knives and pitchforks. Their purpose is to destroy the Halloween Boy before he gets anywhere near achieving his goal.
Inevitably, there’s an air of total lawlessness. The all-male teenage gangs have been starved for the previous five days, the idea that they’ll go after the creature all the more hungrily because of the chocolates and other goodies where his heart should be, but also, I suspect, so that none of them will be completely on their game. For both these reasons, there is much looting and Purge-type violence between the rival groups. In response, the town’s sole cop, Jerry Ricks, a hick of the first order, patrols with a vengeance, and thinks nothing of shooting first and asking questions later.
No matter how many people die on October 31st in this place, questions never seem to be asked. But Ricks isn’t just the way he is because he likes hurting people (even though he does). He’s also the paid-up attack-dog for the Harvesters’ Association, the shady controlling-power in this neck of the woods, who stand to gain the most whenever the Halloween Boy is beaten, and therefore are probably at the root (no pun intended) of this mysterious situation.
This makes the all-licensed Ricks a very dangerous individual indeed. Almost as bad as the monster at the heart of the tale. Maybe worse.
Meanwhile, all these dangers aside, the prize for the guy who finally takes the target down is felt to be worth the risk. His family is showered with financial benefits, a new house, a new car and the like. But he – the kid who did it – gets to leave. Because that is the other thing. No one else ever escapes this one-horse town. They literally can’t. It’s an out-of-time capsule, a mini-universe wherein the Halloween horror story repeats itself year after year, until it’s now become a self-fulfilling prophecy of blood.
This year though, it might be different, because a loner, Pete McCormick, the son of the town drunk, and a kid in awe of Jim Shepherd, who won the prize the previous year and has since vanished, is determined to find out what lies at the heart of this darkness. He is assisted in this by one Kelly Haines, a girl, so she shouldn’t even be on the streets, but someone else who’s been abused by the town’s authorities and is now determined to get answers (and payback).
It is no small thing for these two isolated youngsters, who have never seen beyond the endless flatlands of corn, to confront and defeat the monstrous Halloween Boy, and at the same time evade the ever-watchful eyes of Jerry Ricks and the Harvesters’ Association …
Review
I first approached Dark Harvest thinking we were in the realms of an archetypal stalk-and-slash romp. It had all the makings. An undead maniac with scarecrow attributes and edged steel in his fist. A Palookaville town cut off by geography and culture from the rest of the modern world. Teens in jock jackets riding hot rods while armed with bats. A redneck cop who lets his nightstick do all the talking. And of course, lashings and lashings of Halloween.
It was all there. All I had to do was sit back and enjoy the procession of ever-more brutal murders. But that’s not how it played out.
Quite rightly, Dark Harvest won the Bram Stoker Award in 2006 and was named one of the Best 100 Books of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly. You don’t need to be a horror aficionado to know that wouldn’t happen with everyday slasher fare.
First of all, the style of the writing is Norman Partridge at his concise but visual best. It’s got energy, it’s got drive, rattling us at speed through one nerve-tingling situation after another, but always hitting us with rich if macabre poetry. So yes, there are incredibly gory deaths and some smash-bang action sequences, but the unique atmosphere of Halloween – ‘the smell of cinnamon, gunpowder and melted wax’ – emanates from the pages.
At the same time, there’s a genuinely warm heart under all this carnage.
The monster is not an unthinking killing-machine, the evil is nothing to do with the scariest night of the year, or a witch’s curse, or any kind of devil or demon. I don’t want to say too much more here, because I don’t want to give away any serious spoilers, but suffice to say that, as our two heroes dig deeper and deeper into the complex mystery (because this is not just another night when half-crazed individuals run a gauntlet of ultra-violence), they uncover very human reasons for the perversion of this once homely community.
It might seem ridiculous at first glance, this annual nightmare that visits a town in the middle of nowhere, but ultimately you’ll recognise a familiar story here: a few bad apples souring things for everyone else; human self-interest running without restraint, leading in the end to complete societal breakdown. There is definitely a meaning to all this madness.
The other thing that really caught my eye about Dark Harvest is that we’re not in a world of stereotypes. Again, from the cover blurb, you might be tempted to think it’s good guys, bad guys and a monster. But no, it isn’t that simple. Even the monster has a multi-levelled personality and evokes much pathos, while the heroes, Pete McCormick and Kelly Haines, could easily fall into the ‘Loser Club’ bracket where so many ‘small town horror’ outcasts have dwelled in the past. But they don’t. They’re just ordinary teenagers, with the same strengths and weaknesses that we all share. Even the villains have a purpose in Dark Harvest; they’re not just evil for the sake of it. I particularly liked Mitch Crenshaw in this regard, the coolest kid in town and the candidate most likely to take the Halloween Boy down this year, as he’s on it's trail in his souped-up Chrysler. A slick badass, tunnel-visioned, violent tempered and seemingly dismissive of his doofus buddies, and yet, when they’re in real danger, he shows concern for them.
Again, I’ve probably said too much about Dark Harvest. The idea of this is to sell it, not tell it. So go and check it out. It’s justifiably earned its reputation as one of the best Halloween-flavoured horror novellas on the market. It’s a wild ride for sure, but there are very deep tracts here that will satisfy you far, far more than the average ‘pitchfork and hatchet’ job.
And now …
Trio of Terror 1 – the TV show
Though of course, that title won’t do. So, with regard to this occasional feature, I’m even going to be impudent enough to give it a title. How about, on this occasion, The Monsters Inside.
Check out these possible casts (all for fun, of course – which is why I have an unlimited budget)
Dolly
Edward – Alex Pettyfer
Leonora – Emilia Clarke
Aunt Kestrel – Judi Dench
The Devil’s Own Work
Edward – Aaron Taylor-Johnson
The Teacher – Will Poulter
Eudoxie – Cara Gee
Tyrrel – Anthony Hopkins
Dark Harvest
(Out of my hands, this one, as a movie’s just been made and is very shortly for release. So, this is an actual cast):
Richie Shepherd (standing in for Pete McCormick) – Casey Likes
Kelly Hines - E’myri Crutchfield
Jerry Ricks – Luke Kirby
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